Song in My Heart

There is a song in my heart. Drums and sweet voices, words I cannot understand. I hear it. I've heard it before. When I am alone I can sing it. It is Africa. It is risk. It is the life I am meant to live, of texture and color and depth. Rhythm.

I have been up since 3 o'clock this morning. So I am tired.

Winter came early to Kentucky this season. I am genetically predisposed to Seasonal Affective Disorder. And creative melancholy.

Bad combo.

Let's call it what it is. Today I am restless. I have cabin fever. Craving community and starving for spirituality, I found myself in tears multiple times today. Where am I going? What am I doing? Why am I doing this? What's keeping me from doing that?

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For a couple of hours this afternoon I contemplated quitting. Quitting school, quitting work, packing a backpack, and joining the others. The others who have found their purpose in a journey all around the world.

This is really not a bad idea. Not the kind of bad idea one morning I'll wake up and wonder why in the heck I ever even entertained it. No. This is not a bad idea at all.

But is it a good idea?

Is it rooted in a call to a life of evangelism? Rooted deeply in my need for community, my need to get dirty, my need for a whole, wide world?

All of the above.

Perhaps, is it also rooted in restlessness?

I am in the very middle of something. In the middle of something good and beneficial and purposeful.

In the middle of something incredibly difficult.

And days like today, when the ice only melts long enough to freeze again, I am all tangled up in the difficulty and blind to the growth.

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So I have this song.

And I was born with this incredible, intrinsic desire to do something. Ironically, while I get significantly stressed when something changes, I crave movement.

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I woke up this morning with this overwhelming desire to be a part of something large. Something kinetic and dynamic and communal.

I asked God, if He didn't want to me to leave (to just get up and go like I'm sometimes tempted to), would He please take the desire away.

I heard Him whisper about the desire He had divinely placed in my heart. I put that there on purpose, He whispered to me. That's right where it goes. I'm not taking it away.

Wiping tears from my eyes, I went to go meet a few girls to watch the basketball game. As I slid into the booth something settled back into place within my heart.

Something affirming.

Something a bit like common sense.

Something like vision.

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Time to get movin'.

I know myself well enough to know exhaustion mixed with a little winter blues only leads to a restless heart.

And that when I get like this... something really does need to happen.

Something really does need to change.

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There's this song in my heart.

For a moment I forgot how good our Father is, that He equips those He calls.

That He knows the plans He has for me. Created me the way I am for a purpose.

And if I seek Him, I will find Him when I seek Him with all my heart.

Wholeheartedly I will run this race. I will not miss His calling.